Giovanna Morales Vargas

Director &amp Writer

Giovanna Morales Vargas got her journalism degree at the University of Manizales in Colombia, where she is originally from, during which she took a film course which sparked her interest in writing films. She started her career at a very early age at CityTV Bogotá as a field producer, and then quickly advanced on to become a producers assistant. Her creativity, innovative ideas and desire for telling stories through visual art propelled her career forward with directing television promos for MuchMusic as a division of the TV station CityTV.

Giovanna took the decision of leaving her home country in order to find her path through the art of writing, which for her, implies the exploration of the world through personal experiences. She visited New York, Boston, Toronto and finally found Vancouver as the place where pursuing her goals seemed so much more natural. While in Toronto she produced several short films and a feature. She wanted to learn more about the craft of editing and in Vancouver she went to film school after which she started editing short films and film trailers. Giovanna is now currently producing and directing shorts and feature length films.

James Earl O'Brien

Producer &amp Editor

James Earl O'Brien has done post-production work on a number of award winning short films and has also produced and edited independent features, TV series, documentaries and commercial productions.

In 1999 James was one of the founding members of a collective called RantMedia that focused on producing digital media for distribution across the Internet. RantMedia and its projects have been written about in Wired, Spin Magazine and The Globe and Mail.

In 2003 he produced a multi-camera, live Internet broadcast called "The Sean Kennedy TV Show" which ran for 20 episodes and was an early innovator in streaming TV content over the Internet. This project got the attention of the New York Times and the Georgia Straight.

In 2004 and 2008 James filmed and edited twenty six episodes of an online TV series titled "Patrolling" which appeared on community TV stations in the US and on the satellite station SkyTV in the UK.

In 2010 his editing and production work for the animated short film "Tales from the Afternow: Little Rocks" won him several awards including Best Audio Design at the Vancouver Short Film Festival and Best Animation Science Fiction at the Dragon*Con Independent Short Film Festival in Atlanta, Georgia. Also, he was editor and sound designer on the Japanese language film "Chishio" which garnered both the Audience Choice Award and Best Cinematography award at Bloodshots 2012.

His current projects include editing and producing the feature documentary "A Perfect 14" and the ambitious sci-fi short "Rachael's Mutt".